Adebiyi Ayoyinka retweetledi
Another worrisome judgement in the series of bank glitch cases.
FCMB v 9 Payment & 45 ors (FHC/L/CS/2659/2025) decided by Justice Dipeolu of the Federal high court, Lagos is the swiftest case I have ever come across in the history of litigation. The case had only 3 court dates from the first day it came up till judgement. And lasted less than 2 months. Commendable, right? But don’t be in a hurry.
The matter was commenced by an originating motion on notice dated 30 December 2025, which was served on the 46 defendant banks (“Application”) only. In the affidavit in support of the application, FCMB alleged that, due to a glitch, about N3B was erroneously and frequently transferred from FCMB’s customer account into the account of more than 1000 persons who are customers of the 46 defendant banks.
Accordingly, the Application was seeking orders directing the 46 defendant banks to transfer the monies in their listed customer’s account to the tune of the amounts received by such customer. How innocuous these prayers seem!
The case first came up on 30 December 2025, which incidentally is also the date the matter was filed. On that day, FCMB was granted interim orders ex parte by Justice Aluko of the FHC, sitting as a vacation judge, to restrict the accounts of more than 1000 persons. This ex parte order of restriction was served on the 46 defendant banks who started restricting the accounts of their affected customers.
Some customers including my client wrote to their banks demanding details of the court order pursuant to which their accounts were restricted and some banks provided these details.
With these details, the natural step would be an application to search the court’s file and ascertain the substance of the matter. It was whilst following up on my application to search the court’s file on or about 17 January 2026, that I heard the case was transferred to Justice Dipeolu as substantive judge, and I was informed in Justice Dipeolu’s court that the matter was coming up on 20 January 2026. Since, we couldn’t search the file because our application to search was yet to be approved, we couldn’t file any process to join the suit or otherwise defend the suit. So we determined to attend the matter on the court date.
The matter, to our knowledge was coming before Justice Dipeolu for the first time on 20 January 2026. And to our surprise, the court heard the Application and refused audience to counsel who were not representing parties (I.e., FCMB and 46 banks) in the suit, and thereafter adjourned the matter to 20 February 2026 for judgement. Just like that🤷🏻♂️.
Notably, at the time the Application was heard, some parties had already filed applications to be joined to the suit and served same on FCMB, which did not reply. Yet, the court still heard the Application regardless. Also, each affected customer could only have applied to join the matter depending on when they learnt about the restrictions on their account.
Most importantly, it is trite and elementary law, which has been affirmed in a plethora of cases, that a court cannot make orders against persons who are not parties in the suit and this includes orders against such persons’ properties. It is also trite law, that all parties necessary for the effective adjudication of the issues in a suit must also be joined.
It is therefore shocking that the customers of the 46 defendant banks, whose monies were about to be taken were not joined first to the suit, and their side of the case was not heard. And the court allowed this.
The 46 defendant banks, not being the owners of the money in the bank accounts of their customers were not even as necessary to the effective determination of the suit as the owners of the accounts to whom funds were allegedly erroneously and fraudulently transferred.
@ChidiOdinkalu @channelstv
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